This invention relates to the field of facsimile storage, and, more specifically, to the area of enhancing calling party control of stored facsimiles.
Many voice mail systems, such as the Audix Voice Mail System manufactured by Lucent Technologies, have the capability of storing a facsimile (herein xe2x80x9cfaxxe2x80x9d) for later retrieval by the called party. In the current art, the called party can retrieve the fax by calling the voice mail system""s access number from a fax machine or other device connected to a printer.
There are, however, many times when the person who sent the fax in the first place needs to know whether the fax has been received and/or needs to stop the fax from being delivered; for example, a calculation may be wrong in a fax that was sent to a number of destinations. If the correct information is available, the user would determine whether the called party had received the fax and, if not, delete the previous fax and send the new information.
This problem is solved and a technical advance is achieved in the art by a system and method that enables the calling party to verify delivery and/or cancel delivery of stored facsimiles. This advance is achieved by a voice mail system that receives incoming telephone calls and compares an incoming caller ID with caller ID""s stored in conjunction with previous faxes. If a caller ID of the incoming call matches a caller ID in the database, (i.e., the calling party has previously left a fax) then the calling party is presented with a menu of options. The menu may include determining whether the called party is aware of the fax (accessed the voice mail system) but did not print or delete the fax message, and if the fax has not already been deleted, the calling party may delete the fax. In this manner, a user can change or modify a previously delivered fax and determine whether the fax has been received by the calling party thus providing more flexible interface for storing and delivering facsimiles.